Building from src rpm's...Which Architechture?

[caustica]

Hi, I'm running Redhat 8.0 with kernel version 2.4.18-19.8.0 so obvioulsy I've rebuilt my nvidia drivers from the source rpm's to work with my kernel....anyway....

When I boot into redhat, the login prompt tells me that I'm running redhat on an i686, however I'm actually running it on an athlon(K7 @ 1000Mhz to be exact, NOT a thunderbird).

As I'm typing this, my system has the driver rebuilt for athlon architechture installed, and running nicely.

However, I was wondering if anyone could tell me wether or not I should build them for an i686 architechture, since that's what redhat is telling me I am running.

Basically, I just need to know which architechture to install to get the best performance out of my system.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

-=caustic=-

[Wolfman [TWP]]

If it's running nicely. then leave it as is. The Athlon is a i686, based processor, so compiling it for Athlon or i686 doesn't really make much difference, from what I've noticed. (I run Dual MP's.. )

Even when I update the kernel, it actually downloads the kernel-2.4.18-XX.XX-athlon.rpm. But when checked to see which version I'm running it still say's it's an i686.. So I wouldn't worry about that, if it's working ok..

[bwkaz]

When you say "the prompt says I'm running RedHat on i686", I think that prompt is generated by the linux_logo program. If it is, then that program gets that info from /proc/cpuinfo, so check that file out to see what the kernel thinks your arch is.

Otherwise, if that bit of info isn't coming from linux_logo (you can run the program manually, usually, to see what it's reporting), it might be what all the RedHat packages were compiled for, which is i686 (Pentium Pro). Any processor from the PPro up (PPro, P2, P3, P4, K6-2 (I think), K6-3 (I think), Athlon, Duron, and Athlon XP/MP, for now) will work with programs compiled for the i686. And you don't see a gigantic increase compiling for your specific processor (you do see some, but it's not as much as if the packages were compiled for i586 -- Pentium classic -- instead). So RH goes with a good bit of compatibility, and a good bit of speed.

All that having been said, yeah, if it works, leave it. ;)